First Year Enables My Design TEW Emerge

I can’t believe it’s been one year already. When I first joined TEW, my experience in the design industry was just beginning to hit its stride. Previously, I had accumulated a few of years of design experience, but I considered those my early years working with training wheels on.

This became my first opportunity to work for a full-service interior design firm with an experienced designer like Rima Nasser. It’s been an enriching journey with opportunities to work on so many diverse projects and begin to create my own process while being mentored by Rima. I’d like to share with you some of my favorite projects I’ve worked on during this past year. Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

This is one of my favorite projects not only for its transformation, but because this was the first project I saw come to life from beginning to end. While Rima was traveling, and having been on the job around two months at the time, I made a connection with this family and they became my first scheduled consultation.

It was a comprehensive interior redesign, so I was excited to share the opportunity with Rima when she came back from her trip. The consultation identified a unique synergy between TEW and the homeowners, so I was both thankful and proud to share the news.

Over the next eight months, I was able to fully appreciate each phase of the process to see this project through to its completion. As a team, we become part of the homeowners’ daily lives for an extended period of time, and it demonstrates the importance of good relationships.

I joined this project in the later phases since all of the design had already been completed. So, my role was to serve the client throughout the installation phase. This interior redesign is on the top of my list because of the impact these custom shelves have on this two-story wall. Seeing the transformation of this space was truly inspiring.

It was at this moment, I knew that I was going to learn and grow as a professional interior designer. Plus, I got to have so much fun with helping Rima style the shelves in such a personal way for our homeowner clients. It was great being able to mix artifacts the homeowners had been collecting through the years and marry them with new items to find that perfect balance.

This home office was a smaller scale project, but it made a big impact for me. By this point, Rima was really starting to trust me as a professional. This client had worked with us in the past and already trusted Rima’s design aesthetic, so I had the honor to really be a part of the design process and selections.

One of my favorite memories is getting home from a consultation and telling my husband how excited I was about being involved in the design aspect of this project. To me, this felt like the point where we really started coming together as a team in every phase of the projects we’ve worked on. It inspires me to look forward to what’s to come with our wonderful clients.

Beyond assisting in the design phase and participating in most meetings, I’m responsible for a lot of behind-the-scenes aspects of a project, such as ordering, scheduling and receiving. Handling that role in the process has been eye-opening to recognize how much hard work goes into finalizing an interior.

You can always see Rima’s aesthetic in every project, since she’s the essence of TEW Design Studio. Rima has become the mentor I had always longed for in my career. Someone to look up to and be inspired by as my own designs begin to take flight for our clients.